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Hockey's Data Power Play; Einride Raises $25 Million for Autonomous Trucks
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Puck- and player-tracking technology was used in an NHL All Star game. PHOTO: NHL
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Hockey makes big data power play. This season, the National Hockey League is introducing a puck- and player-tracking system that promises to unleash a wealth of data about player movement and execution. The Wall Street Journal's Laine Higgins examines the system developed by SMT, the sports technology company behind football broadcasts’ glowing yellow first-down line.
“The NHL’s been behind the other sports with regard to the adoption of advanced metrics and analytics,” said Dave Lehanski, senior vice president of business development and global partnerships for the National Hockey League. “We don’t have a lot of the math that supports a lot of the subjective opinions that people have.”
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Highlights of the new system:
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Infrared and radio-frequency sensors are embedded in the pucks and sewn into the collars of skaters’ sweaters.
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Processing devices mounted in the rafters and on the upper tier of the arena record the coordinates of each sensor on the ice hundreds of times per second.
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SMT artificial-intelligence software then collates the millions of coordinate data points and spits out statistics, like a player’s top speed or total time of possession. The information is accessible on a computer system called Oasis.
Pucks made by jogmo world corp., a subsidiary of the Fraunhofer Institute in Nuremberg, Germany, were used in showcases at the 2018 and 2019 All Star games in Tampa and San Jose, respectively, and for two Las Vegas Golden Knights games during the Consumer Electronics Show in January.
NBC hopes to make use of the SMT puck- and player-tracking data for its broadcasts during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, said NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly. The biggest upside, the Journal writes, might come from a market that is not yet legal nationwide: sports betting.
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“The major upside for us is driving more engagement....Right behind that is the ability to monetize this and generate incremental revenue for us and for our clubs....This data’s going to be hugely valuable.”
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—Dave Lehanski, NHL senior vice president of business development and global partnerships
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An Einride driverless electric truck in Jonkoping, Sweden. PHOTO: ILZE FILKS/REUTERS
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Self-driving truck startup Einride raises $25 million. Autonomous electric delivery truck startup Einride raised $25 million in a Series A investment round that it said would help expand the Sweden-based business into the U.S., the Journal reports.
The three-year-old startup, which has built a small fleet of stocky cargo vehicles that it calls “pods,” said Thursday that the new funding round was led by private-equity firm EQT’s venture-capital fund EQT Ventures and NordicNinja VC.
Earlier this year, Einride operated an autonomous electric truck on a short route on a public road in Sweden between a shipping terminal and a warehouse.
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Pinterest uses AI to monitor content. The company says it is using machine learning to identify and hide content linked to self-injury. The company said it has also removed 4,600 terms related to the topic, and that it has has achieved an 88% reduction in reports of self-harm content by users. (VentureBeat)
SAP CEO steps down. The German business-software giant said Thursday that Bill McDermott is being replaced as CEO with immediate effect. SAP named two executives, Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein, to serve as co-CEOs. Earnings at SAP have lagged global peers and this year the company announced a major restructuring, including plans to cut about 4,000 jobs. It this month began an AI partnership with BigID Inc. (WSJ)
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